> [Krimel] > Hi welcome aboard but as you can see I am Krimel. Ron is X.
[carrie] Oh god. Introduce myself and then spill my drink, all in the same gesture. I do that a lot, actually. Glad to meet you Krimel, and sorry for the faux pas. [Krimel] I am generally speaking not known for my social skills either. So no problem on my end but thought Ron might take offense. > [Krimel] > The terms chaos and randomness do not mean that things happen for no > reason or are not determined. If you flip a coin the outcome will be > random, and yet entirely determined by the laws of physics. [carrie] Ok. hmm. is random a technical-logical mathematical description? And thus any human factor, which repeated over millions of times, would reveal a pattern that falls short of pure randomness, disqualifies the whole event. Or, is random just a subjective term, meaning you can't predict what will happen? [Krimel] I don't mean to keep pushing RadioLab but they did an excellent program on randomness: http://www.radiolab.org/2009/jun/15/ I tend to be an auditory learner if you are to you might find it helpful. [Krimel] > At least that is one way to > put it and a way that Nietzsche wouldn't. He had an aversion to the > whole idea of causal chains of determinism. Determinism by the > mid-1880's was claiming that if we knew the position and velocity of > every particle in the universe we could calculate the entire history > of the universe both past and present. This was articulated by Laplace > who when, asked about God, replied, "I have no need of that > hypothesis." > Nietzsche wasn't buying the God hypothesis either but he thought > science was no better. In fact his chief complaint against science was > that after having disposed of the theological Absolute, science was > doing nothing more than building a new set of Absolutes in the form of > the "Law of Science." > Nietzsche thought this was absurd because every Absolute formulation > did little more than answer questions asked in a purely human voice. [carrie] yes, well, he was operating from a subject object perspective, was he not? Just because an absolute is human, is not proof that it's non-existent. In fact, rather the opposite. The law of gravity could equally be called the absolute of gravity. As it's the bedrock of our understanding of the way the physical universe flies. Maybe one day there will come a unifying theory, and then we'll have a new absolute. I'd have no problem with that. But then, I have no problem believing in ghosts, either. [Krimel] I don't know that Nietzsche was an SOMer or that it really matters. I think his point was that theology claims to provide universal absolutes but in fact they are just human inventions to satisfy human ends. He was equally critical of what the sciences had become. He saw the doing exactly what you describe, replace one set of imaginary absolutes for another. As long as we keep trying to substitute one absolute for another we are just spinning our wheels. This is part of my objection to some peoples notions of what the MoQ is all about. [Krimel] How could > such a fleeting beings expect satisfaction from Absolute answers. That > is what he meant by "aesthetic anthropomorphism." We only ask human > question and we only get human answers. It is a bit like the drunk > looking for his car keys under a street lamp because that is where he > finds enough light to see. > This, Nietzsche thought was as just as absurd for the scientist as the > drunks. [carrie] but it makes more sense, to seek where you can see. At least you'll have eliminated a wide circle as you go. Isn't that pragmatic? To ask human questions and get human answers? What other kinds could we ask? What other kinds would we need? But I sound like I'm arguing and I don't want to do that. I'm just poking for answers, as you said I could. ) [Krimel] I guess my point is we should at least acknowledge what we are doing. I could at least respect a Christian for example who might say yeah, there may not be a God out there but I feel better believing there is. [Krimel] Nietzsche thought the "universe" the entire cosmic order was > meaningless and purposeless. But he thought that eventually people > could come to understand how liberating and joyous this could be. [carrie] he sounds kind of emo. but what do I know? [Krimel] He knew that nihilism is not everyone's cup of tea and people would be really upset by it but he saw it a liberating and the cause for celebration and Dionysian orgies. He thought the world would be a better place once people figured it out. In part what he was about was having people stop looking up to authority, custom or the cosmic order to tell them how to live their lives. Whether the universe has a purpose or not is really none of my concern. I have purposes and projects of my own. Even if the cosmos has no purpose what-so-ever, I do and I hope you do as well. [Krimel] > This is what he means by chaos, meaningless and devoid of purpose. But > chaos is not without necessity. Necessity just means thing have to > happen in a certain way and not some other. In this way "chains of > causality" are replaced with webs or networks of influence. To use > another alcohol related > example: in Newton's world physical and mathematical laws determine > how billiard balls will bounce around and collide on a pool table. But > for Nietzsche these laws cannot determine the outcome of a game of pool. > Winning > a game of pool does involve certain physical and mathematical > relationships but is also influenced by the amount of alcohol consumed > in proposition to the attractiveness of the spectators, or the amount > of light available in the bar and the volume of the Jukebox in fact > everything in the environment of the pool table has some influence on who wins. [carrie] well, I agree that the way the ball bounces in a pool game, is a universe of causation, and not merely what occurs on the table. But Mr. Nietzche just seems to be brandishing about metaphysical realism, only in complicated terms. "meaningless and devoid of purpose" is exactly how science looks at nature. And the laws of cause and effect having an objective reality... well, we know that's not true, now, don't we? Quantum mechanics, the tao of physics, all that stuff? [Krimel] Those weren't his examples so I am sorry if they sounded that way. I may be stretching Nietzsche to the breaking point here but the way I see it. In a great many situations realism works really well. Why not adopt it as a perspective when it is? In other situations it doesn't and I become all idealistic. Really I think that is what Pirsig' gallery is all about. My appreciation for any particular painting on the wall is largely a matter of how I feel at the moment. We are capable on many moods and many perspectives. Why should we feel the compulsion to cling to only one? > [Krimel] > Pirsig shows a dim apprehension of this, even though he can't resist > anthropomorphizing, when he says, "Biological evolution can be seen as > a process by which weak Dynamic forces at a subatomic level discover > stratagems for overcoming huge static inorganic forces at a > superatomic level. They do this by selecting superatomic mechanisms in > which a number of options are so evenly balanced that a weak Dynamic > force can tip the balance one way or another." > > He highlights the affinity, I would say identity of DQ and chaos when > he says, "To cling to Dynamic Quality alone apart from any static > patterns is to cling to chaos." A quote that lies outside the orthodox > cannon of the MoQ. {carrie} well that is interesting. not just the quote, but there's an orthodox cannon. Sounds religious! Is the creed and practice of the MoQist online somewhere? Or is the knowledge bequeathed in levels, like with scientology? (jk) [Krimel] There are those among us who get really bitchy if they think you aren't using the right words in the right way. Canonization is really fascinating. Among Christians, for example, there is the canon of the Bible. But no one uses the whole thing. The dietary laws for example are routinely ignored. Or the whole adultery thing, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. But other parts, they are willing to kill each other over. There is a special canon inside the canon. A part that gets taken more seriously than any other. We seem to have that here too. [Krimel] >Much like this one: "It doesn't make any sense. It seems to say that >all life is headed toward chaos, since chaos is the only alternative to >structural patterns that a law-bound metaphysics can conceive." > It is pretty clear that Pirsig doesn't understand chaos the way >Nietzsche and the chaos theorists do, he shares your confusion and you >can hear it when he says, "It doesn't make sense." The same dim >apprehension and withdrawal are also here: "a 'Metaphysics of Quality' >is essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity. It would >be almost like a mathematical definition of randomness. {carrie} ohhhh. I see. You can't have a mathematical definition of randomness, because it would have to be formulaic and anything formulaic can't be random! That's funny. and interesting. But while quality is defined as undefinable, we all do have an idea of what it means to do good. And what it means to just randomnly do any old thing. We have common understanding of the terms that seems to say they are opposite one another. [Krimel] I addressed the randomness thing above but the issue of definition is important. I think widely over stated and misunderstood. I think the problem is not confined to Quality. As I said a while back in another thread. The dog that can be named is not the constant dog. Definitions are never absolute. They are always fuzzy. They indicate they do not prescribe. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
